The highest degree of this “gnosis” is the sight of the godhead himself, or to use the Greek word, “epoptism.” By artifice or illusion apparitions were evoked and “epiphanies” produced.[284] A whole system of fastings and macerations placed the mystic in a fit state to attain to ecstasy. In the temple of Isis the faithful devotee merged himself “with inexpressible delight”[285] in the silent adoration of the sacred images, and when the rites had been accomplished and he felt himself transported beyond the confines of the world, he contemplated the gods of heaven and hell face to face. He who had had the vision of this ineffable beauty was himself transfigured for ever. His soul, filled with the divine splendour, must when its earthly captivity had ended live eternally in contemplation of the radiant beings who had admitted it to their company.[286] * * * * * The mysteries have thus a number of processes, some material and some spiritual, for producing the union with god which is the source of immortality. This union is first conceived as effected with the particular god honoured by a sect. As this god has died and has risen again, so the mystic dies to be reborn, and the liturgy even marks by its ceremonies the death of the former man and his return to a glorious life. The fervent disciple to whom the god has united himself suffers a metamorphosis and takes on divine qualities. In magic this process is sometimes very grossly indicated: “Come into me, Hermes,” says a papyrus,[287] “as children do into women’s wombs, ... I know thee, Hermes, and thou knowest me; I am thou and thou art I.” The old Egyptian doctrine of the identification with Osiris, which goes back to the age of the Pharaohs, was never given up in the Alexandrian mysteries, and the whole doctrine of immortality rested on it. As on the earth the initiate who piously observed sacred precepts received in his bosom the godhead, so after death the faithful became a Serapis if a man, an Isis if a woman. This beatification seems to have been conceived sometimes as an absorption into the heart of the divinity, sometimes as a multiplication of the divinity, who left to the deceased his own personality. It was above all from Egypt that apotheosis in the form of a particular divinity spread first in the Hellenistic and then in the Roman world. As the Pharaohs became Osiris on the earth and after their death, so among the Ptolemies such names as Isis-Arsinoë and others similar are found, and the emperors were adored even in their lifetime as epiphanies of Apollo, Zeus or Helios.[288] Their subjects could obtain a lot as happy as that of the sovereigns. The mystics of Dionysos were early made divine, in imitation of those of Serapis, and became as many emanations of Bacchus; and finally under the empire a cult was rendered to the dead under such titles as Mars, Hercules, Venus, Diana and other Olympians.